My Little White Cane

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about blindness. I mean, what if we were all blind? Obviously there are blind people in the world: blindness, in these cases, meaning that this person is impaired -held back?- from using their eyes to see things. See people. See everything. We can see everything; we can. They can't.

These people are looked at as disabled, impaired. Disabled. They have a disability. Like they're dyslexic, or retarded, or in a wheelchair. They have a disability. We look at those people with their little white canes and big, pretty seeing-eye dogs and we feel pity. We pity those people. Why do we do that? They're not impaired. Does it every occur to anybody to feel jealous of these people? No? Why not. It's not a question. Just why not.

If we were all blind -every single one of us- would we be immensely different? Would we be less superficial? Could we stop caring about our weight and our clothes and our hair and just live, for God's sake? What would it be like to live? Really live, instead of in this little box on a little street in a little town on this little earth? Which is on a speck of dust, which is on another speck of dust. And another, and another, and on and on until we realize that God forbid we'll live before we die.

How can we live if we're too busy? Too busy calorie counting and heading to the clearance racks and paying out the wazoo for a haircut? Paying money?- What is money anyway? It's paper. What gives it a value over a Post-it note. That's paper too. What gives a supermodel value over a grandmother? They're people too.

We're all people, and maybe if we were all blind...

We wouldn't be this way. We'd be less caught up in everything like that.

Punch a paper doll and it rips. It's done. It's dead. Punch a real person and there's a bruise. All you have is a bruise; a discolored patch of skin. We're blind? Wouldn't matter. None of it would matter.

Think about being blind for a day. Be blind. Just once. Be blind in all senses and live. Let yourself live. Because once you live, you die, and we can be blind to that.

We only live once. Let's not waste it being stupid.

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Thank you for your comments. This is the first piece I wrote without really thinking about the impact and the response I might get, so I appreciate the results. I wanted to share this truth after an encounter with someone I'd talked to for years before they became blind. They gave me an enlightenment that's painfully true. We don't want to hear it, but this is it.

I agree 100%! although, i haven't thought this exact thought about the being blind thing, this is still so true to me and i feel the same way.

I try my best not judge people. I'm a teenage girl who has no idea how to put makeup on (although i have sort of a fettish for online clothes shopping, which is bad i know). i usually don't like to think i care about what others think of me, but i do care. I care because they can see. But, you know, the problem really isn't that they can see, bu... (more »)